Beyond buildings and sites

KAREN PITTAR: Hello everybody, welcome to the Museum. Thanks for coming on a holiday week. My name’s Karen Pittar. I work in the development team at the Museum and we love having the CAS lectures, so thank you for coming along.

But before we begin tonight, as we always do at the National Museum, I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians on whose lands we’re meeting this evening. I’d like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and future and to extend that to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders here today.

It’s my great pleasure now to introduce to you Dr Susan McIntyre-Tamwoy.

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Okay, now I’ve been told not to move around too much — because I normally do that — because they’re recording it. So I’ll try and stay in the one place.

So, it’s not quite archaeology but it is heritage, so I thought I’d do something slightly different. In the past couple of years I’ve been lucky enough to undertake a number of small research projects in South-East Asia relating to intangible cultural heritage. It set me up thinking about the challenges and opportunities that the 2003 convention poses, and what benefits it might bring if applied in the Australian context.

As you will have read in the abstract — if the abstract was distributed, I’m not sure if it was — Australia is one of the few countries that has not ratified the 2003 UNESCO convention. Significantly, it’s the large Western nations — Australia, Canada, USA, New Zealand and the UK — who share a similar colonial past that have so far not ratified that convention. But perhaps it’s time to restart a national conversation on this issue because it’s clearly not an attitude that all of our neighbours are feeling.

So, that’s the advertisement for our company, that’s me. I can see that we have a past president of ICICH here, which is the International Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage, and a current secretary general of that committee. So I’ll acknowledge Marilyn. But before we start I’d like to ask each of you to think about what cultural practices you and your family value. Perhaps they’re passed down from the quintessential Australian country lifestyle, or perhaps they’ve been passed down from your great grandparents in another country, like my colleague at work whose family has this cute Easter tradition of covering their eggs with crocheted egg covers. Ta-da, there they are.

Perhaps it’s the smell and taste of lamb shank and a damper cooked over a campfire. Whatever it is I’d like you to write down on your Post-it Note at least one activity, experience, knowledge or skill that you would wish you could maintain and pass down to future generations. Just take your time but once you’ve done it just pass it along to the edge and my colleague, Joel, will collect them all. So I’ll give you a few minutes for that and I’ll give you a reminder that I need them.

So I think it’s really important because in fact we end up having a little bit of a ‘white man has no culture’ cringe in Australia and that actually, you know, gets in the way of us thinking broadly about how this convention might be implied. So tonight I’m going to talk a little bit about how we construct notions of cultural heritage in Australia and how that differs from our neighbours, particularly in the Asia Pacific. And then I’m going to briefly introduce the 2003 convention and some of you will know it. Just bear with me because I’m assuming that — how many people do know the 2003 convention? Not many. Good. Well, you guys can fill in your Post-it Notes during that period.

And then I’m going to — I think it’s worth identifying what is meant by ICH under the convention because I often find that when I talk to my fellow Australians that people make assumptions as to what is inferred by the term ‘intangible cultural heritage’. And I think a lot of them base that understanding on the long discussions that have happened about heritage in this country around Indigenous spiritual values in landscapes and places. That is, of course, a part of what we mean when we say intangible cultural heritage, but it’s not, in fact, how it’s defined under the convention.

Once we’ve established a bit of a shared understanding about what I’m talking about, I’ll explore with you a few examples from overseas that I’ve had a look at that I think could be of interest to us here in Australia if we try to think about innovative ways that we could apply something similar here. And finally I’ll share with you some of my thoughts on how the convention might be relevant to us here and how it might benefit local communities.

So, how we think about heritage. There’s lots of definitions about heritage and cultural heritage. And Australia has a reputation for very active engagement in heritage conservation. So we’re one of the first nations, for instance, that ratified the World Heritage Convention and we did that before it even passed into, whatever they call it — after it was decided and agreed to at the UNESCO meeting but before it actually came into play. So we did that by August 1974 which was only six months after the meeting where everyone agreed that the convention would be adopted.

We have a very structured approach to heritage in Australia though and over the years we’ve developed a number of methodologies and guidelines and things that actually help us streamline the way we identify and assess heritage. So that’s sort of been really positive because it means that out standards are really high and we can hold each other to account and we all know what’s expected. It makes it easier to write a brief for a project and to deliver something but it’s also, in some ways, a bit limiting.

I find, particularly with a lot of my younger colleagues, they’re often confined in thinking by those guidelines and methodologies. And I’m thinking particularly in New South Wales, where you have strange methodologies around Aboriginal heritage. I went to Queensland for seven years and came back and found everyone was just idiots and they were digging little squares everywhere. And who knows why. Certainly nothing to do with archaeology and finding and addressing methodologies to particular projects.

So, I think we’re so used to all these guidelines that it somehow limits how we think about things, and people come out of universities now limited in that way. They move into consulting and then they’re refined a bit more, and we control them a bit more, so we save a bit of time and money. And they pop out somewhere at the end without having had many opportunities to think big. So hopefully I’m not putting any tickets on myself about, ‘This will make you think big,’ but I’m hoping that I’ll at least prise a little crack in people’s minds.

Guiding documents, such as the Burra Charter, the Australia ICOMOS charter for places of cultural significance, are really looked on really favourably across the world. And if you look at the definitions in those, where they define cultural significance very broadly, you’ll see in there that there are intangible elements, if you like, in that definition.

So, for instance, it defines cultural significance as aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual — which obviously can be tangible, and can be intangible — for past, present or future generations. It further notes that cultural significance is embodied in the place itself, in not just its fabric but also its setting, its associations and meanings, records, related places and related objects.

So, there again, you’ve got an intangible element, but that seems to be, in a way, how we’re seeing. When we talk about intangible cultural heritage we’re limiting ourselves in that way. Well, sometimes we’re not even doing that, if truth be known, because not all of that is done very well. But anyway, the definition is there. There is of course an understanding that embedded in these definitions, in this heritage, that there will be values beyond the material, and that the places can be associated with a whole range of intangible concepts such as spirituality, aesthetics and all those sorts of things.

However, despite this great definition, in Australia, I think, there’s a separation between what I think we talk about as cultural heritage and what we refer to as the arts. Cultural heritage is generally seen as places, sites and objects, and the arts as that evolving heritage tradition of art, theatre, song, dance, all of those sort of things. And I think this is key to the difference that we have with many other people, and why a lot of other people don’t understand that we limit ourselves when we talk about heritage.

So, obviously we think cultural heritage exists in landscapes, and that as well as a tangible natural value, it can have an intangible aspect to it. And we also see, obviously, our cultural buildings as being important, and we talk about feelings with these, and we talk about things being awe inspiring. We talk about a whole range of things which are intangible but, again, associated with buildings.

And then, of course, our important archaeological sites, particularly Aboriginal sites, but also other sites. Sites that might be associated with particular aspects of our colonial past that are poignant, you know, like Port Arthur and places like that. And we see them having an intangible aspect as well. But elsewhere, in other parts of the world, and particularly in the Asia-Pacific, cultural heritage is seen as something different.

Cultural heritage is seen as an entire life way, cultural heritage is seen as this crossover between archaeology, architecture, anthropology, sociology, musicology — all of these ‘ologies’ — and so there’s food in there and musical instruments, puppets are big through Asia everywhere. Also the buildings, they do recognise the buildings and the structures and the archaeology but they also see all these other things as part of cultural heritage.

They don’t see the separation between the arts that we see, and perhaps that’s because when they’re talking about arts they’re often talking about traditional arts. A lot of the discussions I’ve had with people is, ‘How do we keep things authentic? How do we — what happens when it’s commercialised?’ All of these sorts of things. Perhaps it’s healthy that we see the arts as something that’s very evolving but we also see some of the parts of the arts as traditional, and parts of our traditions, but there’s no way of incorporating that easily into our definitions of heritage.

So the convention seeks to reflect this diversity of heritage that you can see in that picture by defining intangible cultural heritage as the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills, and as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts, and cultural spaces, which is a very important one associated with them. And that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognise these things as part of their cultural heritage. So this intangible cultural heritage transmitted from generation to generation is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature, their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity.

So, this is a very changing view of heritage in there — and that’s another thing as well, because you’re not actually conserving or preserving these things under this convention, you’re recognising and you are documenting but the documentation is more about promotion and about elevation and awareness-raising and the protection of strengthening of transmission of these things. So it really recognises a much more changing view than we have sometimes seen when we talk about heritage.

So, there’s three lists under the convention, there’s a Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and there’s currently 508 elements listed from 122 countries. And the whole point, as I said, was to ensure better visibility for the intangible cultural heritage with the idea that this will, you know, it’s a UNESCO convention after all, so it’s about harmonising and respect and creating mutual understanding. So the idea is to share these things and to promote them, and that in doing so people will start to learn about each other and learn about the diversity and appreciate the diversity of culture.

Now, I have to say here there are lots of problems with the convention and the way that it’s implemented, and I’m not going into them in this thing but I’m happy to answer questions because I know Marilyn’s going to throw them at me anyway. But, in fact, here I’m talking about — I guess I’m flying a kite, or is it shooting a bow? I’m not sure what I’m doing. Whatever that expression is, I’m trying to make people think about the positive possibilities that we get in this.

The second list is the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, and that’s a really important aspect because that’s when people are identifying things which are threatened for one reason or another. There are lots of threats in the modern world for various pieces of intangible cultural heritage because the spaces for some of them are disappearing. As places commercialise and develop, people are losing the spaces where they perform things.

You have things where people are losing cultural heritage because it’s being stolen and mass-reproduced and things like that. So that list is meant to be a call to action list. There’s been one or two successful interventions there where people have come up with a plan of how to safeguard it. I’ve found them quite interesting and creative. There’s a lot still on that list and there’s some of them that are very problematic.

Then of course there’s the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices and there are quite a few things on this list at the moment. There’s 59 elements on the list for cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding. But on the Register of Good Safeguarding Practices they’ve now got up to 20 projects. Since 2003 they’ve really struggled with this and they’ve just had a consultancy that they let for people to actually find out ways to actually encourage people and promote people of putting forward good practice projects. And they struggle with that.

‘Safeguarding’ is the word used instead of ‘conservation’. Safeguarding is defined in article three of the convention to mean, ‘Measures aimed at ensuring the viability of the intangible cultural heritage including the identification, documentation, research, preservation, protection, promotion, enhancement, transmission, particularly through formal and non-formal education as well as the revitalization and various aspects of such heritage.’ So anything and everything, basically.

So, how intangible cultural heritage is defined by the convention, it has a really broad definition because it’s meant to include all the practices, the representations, expressions, everything. And when you think of it — so one of the things it does is try and break it down into something that’s manageable for people. So in article two of the convention it talks about the elements. There’s five domains, if you like — oral traditions and expressions (including language as a vehicle for the intangible cultural heritage), performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and traditional craftsmanship.

So, people are looking at things under those domains and so often people think, ‘Well, it’s a really odd thing, isn’t it? Because what’s been put up to be listed is a musical instrument’ — the khene, or something, from Laos. But it’s not just the musical instrument. In fact it’s the knowledge system around the musical instrument. It’s the craftsmanship, the knowledge of how to make it. So with that instrument, for instance, all the people who make it are very elderly and they’ve got no apprentices.

And so the safeguarding measure for this — it’s an item in need of urgent safeguarding. Not because someone’s going to destroy all the khenes, and not because people don’t still play it, but there’s no one around, or there’s very few people around, who actually know the traditional methods of making it. So the things that are added to the list are added as a focal point in a world, a knowledge system, that surrounds that thing. So it can be quite intriguing when you start thinking about how do you safeguard these things?

So, I’ve said that more or less.

Okay, so threats to ICH. There’s a great little thing, I think it’s called ‘Dive into ICH’, on the UNESCO website which is where this image comes from. You probably can’t read all the small threats in there but the big groups across the top are things that you’ll recognise because they’re threats not just to ICH, they’re often threats to the tangible heritage as well.

So this little project that they did analysed 59 ICH items inscribed on the list in need of urgent safeguarding and they identified nine common threads and negative attitudes. That could include things like repressive policies or government policies as well. So you could look at me and Myanmar and the Rohingya, for instance. Or it could be negative attitudes that are within communities. It could be a whole range of things.

Demographic issues, decontextualisation — where things are taken out. Sometimes this can be done when people think they’re safeguarding — you know, things are taken out of context and then what you lose when that happens, and what happens to it. A lot of people I spoke to in Asia, particularly Cambodia and Laos and a few other places, well mainly there actually — places that are doing very little actual work for cultural heritage.

But they also are very caught up in the arguments about, ‘Well what happens when someone takes this and does something else with it? How do we stop them? How do we control them?’ And that’s a really difficult question to start with and they get bogged down with that and can’t really do anything with it. But they can all quote examples of things that have been decontextualised, or the weakened practice of transmission. So if kids aren’t interested in learning, there are no new apprentices — I’ve got one case study which is a very successful business but can’t find an apprentice, because it’s not a popular thing nowadays.

Environmental degradation changes the way people can fish, they can hunt, all the systems around it. That means the tools and the things that they used to use don’t work anymore. Cultural globalisation — new products and techniques coming in — that’s actually a very big issue. People are making things cheaper, they’re industrialising a lot of processes. So what is lost in that system when somebody comes in and sets up a factory for gold leaf-making instead of making it by hand? New products and techniques, loss of objects or systems, and economic pressures.

So, just a couple of little case studies. I was lucky when I was in India for the last ICOMOS general assembly there. I did a little thing with Ananya Bhattacharya who’s also in the International Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage and she runs an NGO called banglanatak dot com and that NGO is a social enterprise NGO that focuses on changing people’s lives through intangible cultural heritage.

One of the places we went to was to the singing scroll painters. This is amazing. I mean, they were just amazing women. For generations these women were particularly impoverished. They’ve always had these songs, they’ve always had the ability to do the paintings, but basically the only employment around this particular village was seasonal work in the fields for the men, and then a lot of the money frittered away. The women, particularly young women, were finding it very difficult. No one outside their own village would marry them, that sort of thing.

So this enterprise was set up to change the life of that whole village, and it has. It’s changed the women’s lives who are now in control of the economy, it’s changed the kids’ lives, they’ve got all new housing, they’ve got a cultural centre, and it’s all done with limited funding. It’s through UNESCO’s micro-sized business funding, or something. And through the work of this particular thing.

So basically it started off as people painting traditional stories and singing them. Now people still do that but they also paint more contemporary things. [points to slides] So there’s Osama Bin Laden, there’s the Twin Towers being exploded and here’s the evil planes and stuff. I saw a fantastic one of those, it was long, the women just came out and they — sorry, I’m moving — they came out and they rolled out this huge scroll. It had this plane on it, and that one was evil but had an — from the 1950s, sort of Mighty Mouse-era moustache. And it had the US president with golden hair, which was obviously prophetic because now of course there is one. But it was obviously the idea that this is what a Western American would look like.

But all the dyes are natural and so they have a little visitors’ centre, and you can go. They give you a little free chart of how to make all the dyes from all the different things, and it’s just fantastic. So they paint a scroll and then they’ll sing it for you, and the whole thing is sung as a group.

One of the other places we went to is dokra craft of Dariyapur. I’ve actually got some dokra beads on. So, dokra is a lost-wax method of bronze work and it’s one of those methods that’s been around for a very, very long time, and it does occur in other parts of India as well. But the little story behind this, the legend, is that about 3000 years ago the King of Bastar — which is in the state of Chhattisgarh, which is, I think, where we were — was given a dokra necklace for his wife. He greatly admired it. He gave the craftsman the title of Ghadwa, a title derived from the word ‘ghalna’, which means the melting and working of wax, and a few hundred years ago that craft form became very popular with craftsmen travelling across India. So today you’ll find it in a whole range of places.

But today the craft is still practised in pockets of India, including in parts of West Bengal where we were, and Indian, banglanatak dot com decided they would do an enterprise at this village. So this village remains in a raised area where other people have taken up all the land around it. So it’s like an island in other people’s rice paddies, and it’s got a big industrial thing across the road, and sort of nothing for these people. And it’s quite small, like the whole village would maybe be twice the size of this picture theatre, and it’s turned this into an industry that supports the whole village. Not only do they do this thing with helping people make and produce the actual dhokra items, which are usually little statues and beads and things like that, but they also run things like computer courses, so that people can actually turn it into a proper business.

They’ve set up a little museum and so there’s a co-op that they encourage people to sell through, so there’s not that jealousy. You can walk through the whole village seeing people making this without any hard sell, which is a completely great sales technique because in India there’s not that many places where you can do that. And you can walk around and learn about what’s happening and I think people feel much more inclined to buy. It’s so successful that even while we were there some guys in business suits came in getting orders for stuff they were selling remotely.

So I think they’ve been really small scale but really successful. In Myanmar, Sumo, who is this gentleman here — Sumo, said just like the wrestler — is a young entrepreneur and he is working with women who are doing textiles — buying the textiles and selling them as they are. That’s a Chin blanket but he’s also turning them into other products to expand the market, and create more market for these women. I thought I put the right picture up there [points to slide], there’s a fantastic bag made out of one of these blankets, which of course I had to buy. But he does these shoes that are behind there [points to slide] and they’re all out of traditional Myanmar textiles.

And so one of the things that people are doing quite often is — and you question, is this safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage? And they say, ‘Yes. Because it keeps people doing, they won’t do it otherwise unless there’s a market for it. And not enough people are going to buy a Chin blanket.’ These things can take three months to make sometimes, they can take quite a long time because all the dyes and that are natural as well.

I visited this bronze-casting workshop in Mandalay and it’s the [inaudible] Bronze Casting Workshop and the owner showed me around, and it’s been there for years, it’s always been in this area. In Mandalay when King Mindon set up the city, he set it up in this grid system and there’s these like little voids between the grid at some — I’m not sure I’d ever find my way around it, so people would describe a thing as a coordinate. ‘Oh, it’s between 37th and 36th and 47th and 48th Street.’ And you’d go, ‘What?’ Anyway, so these have these grids and the industries are still in the places where they were assigned. So each area had like industries that were assigned to it to create a workforce, create an employment force.

So, in this one, they make those large bronze Buddhas; they also make other things. They make a few trophy statues of generals and stuff and other bits and pieces as well, but their big trade is in these large Buddhas. They say the business is really booming. They’ve just sold three large Buddhas which are —  we’re talking something huge to South Africa of all places, who knew? But so they’re actually the only place in Myanmar where these are made.

They’re all done, again, with a lost-wax method, or a variation of it, and the first step is to build these mud figures which are quite complex. It takes a long time because they’ve got to dry in between, before the gentleman whose head you can just see [points to slide] is actually putting the intricate details on them. Often the fingers are formed separately and then joined on later.

And the clay is a special clay that comes from a river which is quite a way away. And I said, ‘Don’t you use local soil?’ ‘No.’ It’s all from this one place. So there’s always this interconnection in these things where there’s different — you touch on the intangible cultural heritage in one area and it’s linked to all these other areas that supply it.

So, they basically build these things, then they cover them in this sort of a wax, it’s like your old grandma’s floor tiles, you know? The old lino floor tiles which they make out of wax and they mix something with it. I don’t know what it is, like a kerosene-type stuff, some sort of oil. And then they form it into these squares and then they warm it in the sun. Once this is built, they put it all over it and smooth it all over it, and then they make another mould over the top. Then they pour hot bronze in and they cook this baby overnight. So at 5pm in the evening the fire is lit, ready to go, and when they come back at 5am in the morning they open it up.

So, the kilns are purpose-built for each item, so they build these kilns around them. And then of course  they have to do all the repairing of the bronze and then the smoothing off and whatever. Quite often then they’ll cover it, sometimes they’ll cover them with a — what do they call it? It’s some black thing which again is another plant that comes from somewhere else. Did I put it in here? I can’t remember what it was. But then they’ll often put gold leaf over the top of it.

So, the gentleman who was showing me around, [inaudible] who’s the manager, he says that his biggest problem is finding apprentices. That he had quite a few people working for him but they were all older men. And he said when he started, you started like 10 or 12 years old and then you’d work for six years before you were considered trained. Now, of course, no kid wants to do this.

And one of the mechanisms that Myanmar is using — I’m not sure very successfully — they have a university of arts and culture, and that university has a feeder school which is a school that has children who are interested in various art forms and crafts and they will feed into that university, but he looked very doubtful that he thought that was working. So I think he’s still struggling to find apprentices to assist him. So that idea of transmission, and the fact that kids now walking around with mobile phones, which a few years ago weren’t available in Myanmar. You know, five years ago you couldn’t easily get a phone, you had to go into a lottery.

So, okay, there’s a lot of threats that actually face things as well and some of those are from, as I said, people mechanising things from outside, putting some things as a cheap imitation. I was lucky enough to — oh, hold on, sorry I missed one there [points to slide]. So yeah, okay. Some of the threats are about new technology and others can be a by-product of the ill-informed efforts to safeguard or conserve ICH, such as decontextualising it. But the inter-governmental committee for ICH has just recently put out ethical principles for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and that’s supposed to assist with some of this in terms of setting out the principles that everyone involved in this will abide by, recognising that culture is dynamic and living.

However, all of the countries who ratified this, often the decisions are governmental decisions that are things that are decontextualising things. So when I went to have a look at this gold-leaf workshop, [inaudible] — it’s called the [inaudible] Gold Leaf Workshop and it’s in Mandalay. It’s in a funny little street where all the gold-leaf workers are, and all day all you hear is banging their hammers. You wouldn’t want to have a nap in any of those places there in the middle of the day.

So, I did have a little video but it’s not working, I couldn’t get it to work. I won’t even bother trying because it worked on my computer and then didn’t work on the one at work, but you can find it if you look up ‘gold leaf Myanmar’. There’s a little Getty video which actually talks about gold leaf. And it actually — I think part of it was at this actual workshop.

So gold leaf, which I’ve always just thought of such a simple thing, is not so simple at all and takes a long time to make. The paper that is used in the gold-leaf making takes three years to make and is a special paper made of rice stalks, and is made somewhere else again, at another place along the Irrawaddy. So, in fact again, there’s that connection. They only use things from that place, and it’s only there. And that paper — there’s three different types of paper used in the process.

In this figure with the guys with the hammers, you can see for the archaeologist — the tangible cultural heritage — you can see these sloping stones they have that they actually use as the base. They put the piece of gold actually in-between, wadded layers of gold between this coarse paper and then wrapped around with leather, and then they just bang it for, like, 1200 strokes of these heavy hammers.

I said to the guy there, I said, ‘So they’re all young?’ And he said, ‘Oh yes, it’s a young man’s thing, they’re too old. You have to become the supervisor or the owner by the time you’re older. So these guys just hammer 1200 times a day. And the little thing in front [points to slide], I asked him, ‘How do you know when it’s ready?’ And they use a water clock. So it’s that bowl and the little spool in front and they said, one of them said, ‘But you can tell from the sound, the gold talks to you’, because you get to a point, usually after about 1000 hits where you an open it up and see how it is.

And then, for some reason, the women get the job of divvying up all the gold in a workshop and basically it’s hammered multiple times before it gets to this ultra-thin bit because they quarter it and then send it back down for hammering again. So it’s absolutely thin, it’s like a smear when they put it on your hand, it’s like a smear of gold and then they package it up in these little packages. But just recently a [inaudible] temple, pagoda, which is in Yangon not Mandalay, so the other end of the Irrawaddy is one of their biggest customers.

So, the gold leaf is made in Mandalay, it comes down the Irrawaddy to [inaudible] and just recently [inaudible] the trustees put out their tender for refurbishment and for service suppliers services in terms of gold leaf and they chose a company that was, I think, in Vietnam or something, which is mechanised and can make their gold leaf much cheaper because they just smash it. And then the packaging is made to look almost exactly the same as the [inaudible] Gold Leaf Workshop. For me — I mean presumably there was a word different in there somewhere — but for me, not reading Burmese, it looked exactly the same. So it was a complete rip off of their thing.

So 200 gold-leaf workers took to the street in protest and they petitioned the government to make the trustees change this because they said all of them would be losing their jobs. They had 20 per cent loss in gold leaf sales because it was going to this outside source. It’s created a lot of interest in gold leaf and the ministry for culture and religious affairs has held discussions between the trustees, the pagoda now and the society which resulted in the tender documents being altered.

So, [inaudible] claims that Myanmar gold leaf is superior to that of Thailand and Vietnam because it’s purer gold, it’s 24 carat gold and the others use 14 carats. And it’s finer and it adheres better. The way they make it, it is so fine that it actually almost sticks by itself. So now the interest in this has sparked the ministry to document the process and they believe, in fact, that it might be one of the items that they’re going to nominate for addition to the list of representative intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Salt making is another interesting one. I mean, not necessarily, ‘Wow,’ it’s probably done in a similar way in many places, but salt making in Myanmar is still done very traditionally. It’s all done by local families. So, we toddled over this strange little bridge here [points to slide] and there’s basically a paddock of obviously saline soils, and people plough it. So, it’s got little runnels down it and then they wait for rain. Then the salt just rises to the surface and they scoop the salt into these little piles that you see up there, just thinly off the top because they want the salt, they don’t really want the dirt. Then they make a bowl out of that mound by putting water in it. So, that large thing that looks like cement is just the dirt [points to slide]. And then gradually they swish it around and then they put some straw in it to sort of filter it a bit. At the bottom of that, they stick a piece of bamboo in the bottom — probably can’t see it in that. Bad choice of photos.

At the bottom they have a terracotta pot. They have a piece of bamboo they stick in the bottom and gradually the water sinks down through the dirt, taking the salt, obviously, and solution into it. Then they go into this little tiny lean-to thing where some girl with perfect complexion, because she’s sitting there in the steam all day, using peanut shells to get a constant hot heat, evaporates away the water and you get that big pile of white salt at the end. So it’s a really hands-on, family business salt making in Myanmar. So, you know, they could easily do all those trendy Byron Bay salts. I’m sure this is probably much better.

Textiles. Everywhere you go when you’re talking about ICH in Asia people complain about people stealing their textile technology. They’re a popular and diverse form of ICH. Indonesian batik — we’ve all bought a batik some time in our life, I’m sure. It’s a long history of a culturalistion. They’ve got diverse patterns — makes it very popular for sale. But because it’s very popular, other people go, ‘We can make it cheaper and we can copy it.’ And instead of using the resistance method by pouring little bits of wax on the cloth and dipping it in your dye, and then taking it out and then waiting for it to dry, then melting the wax off and then putting new wax on to get another colour — instead of doing all that we can just print it in a factory.

And one of the things, if you buy a batik and it’s not printed on both sides, if it’s a machine one it’ll probably be plain. You know, like when you buy a fabric and it’s not reversible on the back. But if it’s a batik the colour will go right through it.

In 2009 the Indonesian government had the batiks, from Java particularly, added to the representative list of the ICH of humanity. It was part of their ideas around protecting it and raising awareness that it is a specific thing. The other thing there is the Chin blanket, as you saw it. Now, the story behind Chin blankets — for a newly wed Chin woman, they weave a large blanket and then she and her husband will be wrapped upon their deaths in the blanket. So it’s an anti-glory box. When one partner dies, the blanket is cut in two, and one half is used to wrap them, and the other half is kept until the other person dies. And they think that the blanket will reunite them, the two spirits, one day.

So, the blankets come from a special place in family life. But people have obviously worked out that they’re very attractive and people want to buy them, and want to sell them. So, it is quite a large trade but they can take three months to make. So, in Kachin State in Myanmar — Myanmar is a very diverse country, so it’s got lots of different ethnicities in it, and in Kachin State, which is the most northern province in Myanmar, there are eight different looms, I’m being told, each for a different weaving purpose. One’s for a hat, one’s for a sarong — you know, a longyi — one’s for blankets. So, there’s different looms for different things.

So, you can see that the technology around these things is really complex sometimes, and just changing that and being able to buy something cheaply at the shop, you can lose all of it at once. One woman there, said she believes cultural heritage is the most valuable thing for communities. I think you can see that in terms of the way that culture has remained very tightly controlled in Myanmar. It’s the department of cultural and religion affairs, and has an ex-general in charge of it, so it must be important.

So, around textiles, nearly everyone complains about things being stolen. The batik thing — you might have read something about the batik fights that were on a few years back — but the Indonesian government, part of the reason they listed it was to protect it. Not that listing it protects it, but raising people’s knowledge about it and the idea that this is actually something very — is ours and very linked to culture, is part of protecting it.

They also then introduced a thing called, sort of, a batik mark — a bit like the wool thing that came out many years ago. So, now batik that’s from an artisan actually has a symbol from the batik industry. So it basically is stamped as being an authentic batik if the producer is actually someone who is part of that system. So, I think that idea of using the UNESCO convention as a way of protecting cultural heritage is something that works sometimes, and other times has some issues with it.

But it’s something that people are looking to because if I can see it’s mine — Sometimes they’re looking at it competitively. I went to three different countries and they all said, oh you know, ‘What’s the other country looking at putting up?’ And I went, ‘Oh, I don’t know. They’re talking about lacquer wear.’ ‘Lacquer wear? We’ve got lacquer wear.’ And I said, ‘You know it’s not supposed to be a competition? You could all join together.’ But there’s some impractical parts in the convention in that expectation that some countries will get on with each other when they never will, but anyway.

So, can you collect up people’s little Post-it Notes for me, Joel? Because we’re getting to that point.

So how could they supply to Australia? We’re so ethnically, we’re — sorry. Three people looked at this and no one picked that up [points to slide]. We’re ethnically diverse. What I hear all the time when people say, ‘It wouldn’t work in Australia because, you know, it might work for Indigenous stuff but what’s our culture? Our culture is someone else’s culture because it’s either a Celtic culture or it’s Yugoslavian culture or it’s somebody else’s culture.’ But I think we need to look at this a little bit closer because, in fact, that’s not a problem really with this convention.

With Aboriginal heritage, as I said, it’s a bit easier to see it. There’s some benefits that could enhance that for arts and crafts, increase incentive to protect traditional copyright intellectual property, a boost in regional and remote economies. I mean, one of the things that impresses me — in fact, I tried to get a project up with some funding from the India Council to bring banglanatak dot com over and do a workshop with these young Indigenous people in Cape York who set up an association very interested in protecting and promoting their cultural heritage.

So, I thought it would be interesting to see if you could adapt a model that would work in a remote community here that would provide people with, not a major business, but a business that supports families, that actually works in a local economy. So, I think there’s potentially real benefits in this.

It will strengthen the role and status of senior community members and encourage transmission of culture. Some people in some places, let’s face it, it’s not all about respecting elders. In a lot of communities I’ve been to, old people sit there ignored until they die and then people say, ‘Oh, [inaudible] did you record that story? Did you record their culture?’ After the fact because, like all of us, we’re busy doing other things or we’ve got an interest in other things.

But if you make it relevant, if you give those people — if you make their tradition relevant again then of course people will want to learn it and want to know it. Although the bronze workshop might argue with me there. But I think that will flow. If there’s jobs, if there’s a chance to see that this actually contributes in today’s world, then I think more young people will pay more attention.

It will provide opportunities for families or clans based on micro-enterprises, based on country. And there will be symbiotic benefits for the environment as traditional practices are maintained. I mean, it’s all very well to say that traditional practices are great, but we see over and over again that unless there’s some incentive — maybe through the range of programs or whatever — unless there’s an incentive where someone is paying for it, there’s a fee for service, good intentions fail and other things take over.

But what about the Australian colonial and postcolonial heritage? That’s where people find it really hard to understand how this might work. But if you think about the convention, it has an emphasis, actually, on multi-national listings. Falconry was listed everywhere from the Philippines to Saudi Arabia. I don’t know how many countries — about 15 countries — that were part of that listing. So, there’s this idea that you can actually do these cross-border things and look at where your traditions or roots might come from, and look at cooperative things — building relationships, building diplomacy, all those sort of things.

And, again, there’d be an enhanced status for arts and crafts. So, in the arts, between the cultural heritage places and sites, objects, and places and between the arts. Arts and crafts — the craft area falls down, I think, in Australia, it’s not something that’s supported the same way. And this would increase intergenerational collections, again, in the same way I was talking about for Indigenous communities. Again, boosting regional and remote economies, strengthen the role and status of senior community members and encourage transmission of culture. New roles for local community networks, such as the Country Women’s Association, for instance, perhaps. Integrity and promotion of Australian sports such as AFL. And Jasmine at work would say callisthenics because she keeps telling me it’s totally Australian. Does anyone know that? Oh, there we go, another callisthenics person. I should have put it in.

Also the multicultural aspects of the background mean that you could be looking at things in terms of the diaspora of it. You could be looking at how things connect to other places, like dragon boat ceremonies and lion dancing, or any of those sorts of things connecting them together. In fact, what would a true Chinese — and obviously there’s difficulties in these, and governments go, ‘Oh, no, not the multinational thing, there’s a lot of diplomacy in that.’ But if you get them off the ground they can be really amazing things. You know, if China actually did decide to do a full multinational listing of some heritage, what would that look like? Because that’s outdated now, but that’s Chinese diaspore in 2011, in terms of places they are. So, in fact, some Chinese practices have spread across the world and are probably developed in different ways in the context of where they are.

Similarly the Italian diaspora, there’s been two major, and now currently a third, diaspora of Italian people. So the first one was around 1880 and then went right up to the unification of Italy. And then there was the one after the war, and that’s the biggest one. There were Italians who came out to Australia before that but the post-World War Two movement of Italian people out from Italy was massive.

People say there’s a third wave now because of economic issues and other things. So I think the figures I’ve got — they’re really outdated — but according to the public register of Italian residents abroad, figures of Italians abroad rose from 3,106,251 in 2006 to 4,636,647 in 2015. It’s growing by 49 point something per cent in just 10 years. So it’s a massive thing.

And so, I think Italians have made a massive contribution to our community and economy over time, and certainly have been cheering on because they managed to get, in 2017, their art of Neapolitan pizza — and I can play the little clip that comes with this.

VIDEO: [Italian language]

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Any Italians in the audience? So, the art of Neapolitan [inaudible], is anyone Italian here? Anyway, is a culinary practice comprising of four different phases relating to the preparation of the dough and the baking in a wood-fired oven. So they’re the ones who really make the dough and then spin it around all the time. So, the element originates in Naples and there’s 3000 [inaudible] people living there and performing there regularly. It’s interesting that they use the word ‘performance’, it’s in the listing for that thing.

Imagine if we actually started to think about really what our cultural heritage is. So, what our neighbours have told us is that this is great stuff. There’s positive engagement with local communities, there’s good PR both internally and abroad, there’s increased tourism interest and potential, there’s a boost to rural and remote economies, there’s marketing and export opportunities and a sense of national pride. Now, obviously there’s ethical and political issues around national pride, so I’m not going to get into a nationalistic spiel, but this is good news for governments. So it’s really interesting that our government has steadfastly refused to ratify the convention.

So now, I’m looking for some ideas here because I’m sure you would have come up with some others. So what did you guys come up with? [reads Post-it Notes] Sitting around the piano and singing with grandma and mum. Margaritas with my aunts and listening to their crazy stories. Or storytelling and story listening is obviously a very important part of everything. Scavenger hunts at Easter with clues in the eggs. Cooking all day. Thanksgiving and everyone saying what they’re thankful for. So, you know, obviously there are links with other countries here as well. Bedtime stories. Sitting and just listening and playing music. Family values, respect of grandparents — so that intergenerational respect and transmission. Wow. So that intergenerational thing of family all living together with multiple generations.

Nan’s Welsh cooking — I don’t know. No, Wales is a part of the United Kingdom so they’re not in it either. Yes. Methods of housekeeping — who put that there? That’s just — you haven’t seen my house so I’m not missing that. When we get that up and going, that would be a good one because doesn’t it mean more maids?

Love of learning. Interacting and understanding differences, cultures — all the things that are supposed to actually be part of the convention. Catering for family and friends. Pizza nights, there we go. Phone calls on birthdays, yes, and cards. Christmas CDs played at Christmas. Photos of family members.

So, you know, the Christmas tradition’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Because you often hear people, particularly from the Great White Right, complaining that Christmas will go, we’ve got too many other religions here now, we’ve just had Easter holidays and probably half the population is no longer Christian. All of these sorts of things but, in fact, that is something that people will feel a real loss of. This is a tradition and so we’ve got to be thinking of these things. How would we transition these? How do we maintain the traditions that make people feel — reinforce their sense of identity without excluding others?

So I think there’s a lot of great ideas in here for me that I’ll be able to put in my next talk. Putting up Christmas things to John Farnham’s Christmas album, oh my goodness. Annual summer week in Kosi, there’s a good one. Easter family picnics — a lot of Easter, obviously Easter was close on the brains. Singapore food from living there as a child, yes. Opening the smallest present under the tree on Christmas Eve. That was a cheat, there’s someone who’s a cheat. Pizza making, another pizza. All right, there we go.

So, there’s just some ideas that we can start thinking about. As you think about this you’ll think more about what it is that makes up Australian culture. I think it’s what other things you want to keep as you move forward, what are the things that are really important? What are the things that we can change and adapt from other people? And how we can build them into our heritage practice. How we can think about it in terms of the research we’re doing for the students, because this is an area wide open for research.

And that’s it, thank you very much.

KAREN PITTAR: Questions?

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Marilyn.

QUESTION: Thanks very much, Sue, for all of that and the wonderful case studies and examples that you’ve given us. And I’ve just sort of set me thinking a little bit, but thanks so very much.

A couple of things, and I guess I’m getting to the convention per se. As you know there was quite a push back at the time, before and around the time, wanting to expand on perhaps a convention already there, such as World Heritage. And, I think, in Australia and other countries, but particularly here, we’ve been pushing for, as you mentioned, the Burra Charter and things like that, that widening of recognition of heritage beyond the physical built, wonderful, whatever, whatever. I won’t go into all of those details. I would actually argue that if you ask the average suburban person in Australia they wouldn’t carve up their sense of tradition or identity or sense of place into different bits because of different legislation. And that’s a little bit what UNESCO has been doing.

So, yes, one of the reasons for it was that acknowledgement of cultural diversity in an increasingly globalised world. We probably all wear the same sorts of clothes at the airport, we might have had different things for breakfast or whatever, but that superficiality, but genuine also taking over of lookalike, or being alike. But the convention itself then also starts to slice and dice. You’ve given the three different listings, and the safeguarding one is fantastic and the one at risk, but when you’re listing something, you’re identifying one element to put up, not the full culture. So what are we going to do? Are we going to have lamington drives? Are we going to have Two-up on Anzac Day?

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Well, I was told that lamingtons aren’t Australian. I was going to use that and then I put pavlovas and they weren’t really Australian. So Anzac Day, thank god for Anzac biscuits.

MARILYN: But —

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Which are controlled by law apparently.

MARILYN: And another comment, of course, because signing up and, of course, countries are doing it that have got great diversity, in many of the member countries, of course, the diversity is localised. So a group, may be a different ethnicity lives in a particular area. Apart from our three to five Indigenous groups, we’re mixed up and the requirement of —

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: I’m going to challenge that, Marilyn.

MARILYN: You are going to challenge that?

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Because if you go to Vietnam, into the city —

MARILYN: Yes, I know.

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Into Hanoi, they run this, because it’s a bottoms-up — one of the things Marilyn is talking about is also that these things are supposed to be a bottoms-up convention, whereas the World Heritage Convention was seen as a more top-down convention.

MARILYN: Top-down, exactly.

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: The bottoms up thing is a bit of a misnomer because of course the state party — the national government is the signatory and they’re the only ones who’ve got the power to put something forward. But that aside, in Vietnam they run it right down to commune level, and there’s another division below that, which is basically almost like your neighbourhood street level, and they run the things from there, so what’s important there? Those things don’t necessarily get to the list. It’s a bit like if you think back to the register of the national state days —

MARILYN: No, no, no, I appreciate all of that. What I’m trying to say, and obviously other people are going to have comments to make, there are some countries where there really are the community control as apotheosised by the convention does actually really work. I guess the point is that the convention requires a state party, a member country that is ratified it to identify, to have inventories, and that’s a huge task. If you’re going to treat all the different groups, whether they’re the mix that we have in urban areas or the mix in the slightly more diversified inter regions, such as Indigenous people within Australia. It’s a huge task.

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: It is, but it’s something, for instance, local governments — a form of government that I think should be abolished — but if we’re going to keep local governments, they’re always talking about how do we maintain the identity of our local area? This is a perfect way of doing it at the local government level because I think there are different ways of looking at this, so instead of looking at the problem, we look at how we would like to do it.

MARILYN: Oh yes. But we don’t have to join the convention to do that.

QUESTION: Just briefly. There is within Australian ICOMOS a number of national scientific committees, there’s also the —

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: I should have mentioned that, sorry.

QUESTION: … international committees on various topics including intangible cultural heritage. But the national committee has recently developed a practice note for heritage professionals for dealing with intangible cultural heritage in Australia. Now ICOMOS, of course, as you’ve heard, is concerned with place, so it’s intangible cultural heritage of place, not intangible cultural heritage —

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Across the domains.

QUESTION: ... that floats free, like language or something else. Not that that’s unimportant it’s just that that’s what ICOMOS deals with. So, if people want to go to the ICOMOS website they can find amongst the resources there this practice note which includes a number of examples of the sort that Sue was talking about.

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: And, in fact, they could join and get involved.

QUESTION: Oh, if they want to join. Yes. I happen to be one of the conveners so if anyone wants to join, they can talk to me about it and we can make things happen.

QUESTION: I suppose one of my problems with — I understand and support the concepts — one of my problems with it is that some of the examples that you’ve shown, for example, go from an intangible cultural practice to a commercialised industrial activity at a different scale with different products. To me, the question is, what is actually being conserved here? What’s being protected?

If it came to Australia and Australia signed, I predict the first two things off the rank would be Anzac Day and all who sail in her and the Man from Snowy River and all who trample across the Kosi.

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: That’s why I put the drover in.

QUESTION: So I think it’s open to very great political manipulation of what is our cultural heritage in Australia, for example, where we don’t have that deep culturally based set of behaviours that we all share.

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: That’s right and you could actually look at it that there’s nothing in the convention that says you have to immediately rush out and do everyone’s intangible cultural heritage. I mean, different places I’ve visited have looked at it in different ways. You’ve got to produce a list, you’ve got to show your safeguarding. But some places have done it where they’ve actually focused on the smaller area where people are keen.

There was a very interesting case in Vietnam with a form of singing. They had two forms of singing on the list of items in need of urgent safeguarding. One was a thing call Xoan singing, the other one is something, [inaudible] or something, and one of them they actually came up with a plan for and they said, ‘We’re getting it off that list. We’ve got a plan.’ And they actually — it does link place to it. So they found one of the issues that is was threatened was that there was a dwindling number of guild leaders who could teach the singing. There was a lack of opportunities to perform it anymore and that was partly because of the lack of places. So, the spaces in the community where that thing would be performed were going, shopping malls and other things like that. So the government put — I don’t know how many million dong, quite a lot of money and quite a lot of it went into conserving places and buildings because they were essential to it. They saw that the safeguarding of this element and they picked it. They had it almost off endangered.

They went from having a dwindling number of people who could do it up to hundreds within a couple of years. When asked why they chose that form of singing they said, ‘The other singing wasn’t appropriate for children,’ because it was too much about love and sex, I think. And this form was a form that could be taught to children. So one of their ways of doing it was to have the senior people train up other qualified teachers and then to run it through schools. No, after school —they didn’t want to liaise with the department of education, that was too difficult — so after-school activity. And then basically ended with these performances because they’d reinstated the places.

Now, there’s lots of issues with that but it’s a thing that obviously people in that area wanted to do. When I asked, ‘Why that one and not the other one?’ it was partly the nature of the singing and partly the fact that it was one province. So, sometimes it’s easier to work with committed people, as we all know, in one place and to look at it holistically. So, if you wanted to link the World Heritage Convention with this convention, there’s nothing to stop us looking at a national park that’s on the World Heritage List, like Kakadu or Uluru or any of them, and actually saying, ‘Well, let’s look at all the intangible cultural heritage within here as well, and let’s help Aboriginal people set up micro-enterprises that maintain and promote those, link it to the ranger program, all of those things.’ Why don’t we do things more holistically?

QUESTION: Thank you, hello. My name’s Jenny. Thank you for bringing a lot of ideas together. One idea that I’ve been looking for and I haven’t seen and you might like to comment on, is what is lost and gained in gender identity?

At the moment I’m working, for example, with 300 or 400 families from South Sudan where gender identity is very strong in national culture and the teenagers have nothing to replace it with when they try and become Australian [inaudible] and there is no male image, for example, that lives up to South Sudanese male, and vice versa. I’m not advocating that there should be gender differences but I’m saying, in a cultural context, gender is very clearly defined. If we have a new culture developing in Australia, what do we do about gender identity?

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: I don’t really have an answer to that because I was mainly looking at the convention.

QUESTION: Why?

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: But I think it is interesting because these things — I mean, anthropologists have been dealing with these things for a long time. It’s not that it’s unknown that, in fact, people have a sense of identity that can be very fragile if you take them out of their environment. So, I think you’re right, it is something that really needs to be looked at. What is there that can replace — I mean, the obvious thing that often happens with young male refugees in Australia is soccer or footy or something that it gets them into a male bonding sort of environment and I do know some kids from Syria which the community actually actively use that for. But that’s not going to work for everyone because not everyone is going to be interested in that aspect of it. So I don’t really have the answer to that at all. Sorry.

QUESTION: Well, can I finish? The choice, I mean, it’s about everybody’s choice. But I just wondered under the cultural guidelines whether protecting choice is also a priority or a principle? You know it’s not defining gender by your sex particularly but it’s allowing your choice to have a stronger image or not such a strong image or —

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Yes. In the 2003 convention it’s not really dealing with that at that level. It does deal with gendered practices, and all practices are eligible except for practices that are not considered to be humane or acceptable under the international human rights. Like female genitalia mutilation is not something, even though it is something that some cultures would say, ‘Well, that is part of our cultural identity,’ whatever, that’s not something that can be listed.

So, that convention is not going to solve all of your issues around gender but certainly there are some. If you look through the things that are listed there are different practices which are very gendered practices. And some of those would be singing, some of those would be performing, some of them might be gay performances. And there’s falconry which tends to largely be a male-dominated thing in most areas, although not solely.

So there are very gendered things listed in there but I’m not sure it’s going to really be the answer. This is not going to be the vehicle that answers your particular needs in that area, I think.

QUESTION: Sorry, I just wanted to interject because I just feel really quite uncomfortable with the notion that engendered culture is something that belongs to another or other minority migrants, refugees and behaviour that needs to be considered. I mean, here in Australia we’re tackling head-on the whole idea of toxic male culture. And it’s not just something that needs to be addressed and —

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: And not all gendered stuff is toxic either, I’d say. So you know, I’m not —

QUESTION: But I think that when you’re talking about particularly male culture, I think that there’s a lot —

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: It’s certainly going to be on the 2023 convention .

DUNCAN WRIGHT: This discussion can be continued later on. But maybe we will just finish on that point and thank our speaker for a very interesting and engaging lecture. And we will give her the bottle of wine, I’m sure she’s been waiting for. So thank you very much, Sue.

SUSAN MCINTYRE-TAMWOY: Thank you.

DUNCAN WRIGHT: And yes, I also want to just flag a few things that are coming up. So, in fact we might ask Richard to tell what is happening immediately. Okay.

RICHARD MORRISON: Okay, there is a symposium coming up in Canberra and region heritage, the Canberra Region Heritage festival. It’s a symposium in this space on the morning of 4 May. It’s being advertised through various places but it is on at the moment on the National Museum website and that’s where you have to book. It’s free and there are some programs here. So —

DUNCAN WRIGHT: [inaudible]

RICHARD MORRISON: Oh, okay. Yes, sorry. The title is Contemporary Archaeology: How Archaeology is Practised Today. We’ve got five speakers, Mike is one of them. And Mike will be talking about Australian archaeology in Antarctica. We’ve got emeritus professor Richard Wright talking about the forensic archaeology of war crimes. We’ve got Dr Alice Gorman, who’s a space archaeologist, talking about Shadows of the Moon: The Forgotten Apollo Heritage. Dave Johnston will be presenting a video on the Gollion Farm Aboriginal ochre quarry at Sutton, which is a video about shared heritage of place. And Dr Ian Johnston will be talking about the repatriation of Indigenous material culture. And then there’ll be a Q&A panel following. So as I said, 4 May in the morning from 10.30.

DUNCAN WRIGHT: Okay. Thank you for that Richard.

RICHARD MORRISON: I’ve got programs here if anyone wants.

DUNCAN WRIGHT: Programs here. Also if you just google Canberra Archaeology Society it will come up in the events. I’ll also just flag the lecture that happens after that, or at least to say that this is going to be the ACT Heritage Festival symposium and the last time we’re going to be in Visions Theatre. We’re going to be moving to a new one while this theatre gets redeveloped. I think that’s right, isn’t it?

But we very much hope to see you again when we reopen the CAS and Friends seminars at ANU later on in the year. The next lecture — there’s a bit of a break — so the next lecture is 18 September and that is Andy Viduka who’s in the Department of the Environment and Energy talking about maritime archaeology. Yes. Okay, thank you very much for coming.